Shah Rukh Khan’s fans – of whom I am one – can finally, and decisively, put to rest their collective agony over the cinematic travesties called Jab Harry Met Sejal and Zero; it would be safe to say that Pathaan has effectively healed those wounds. At the time of writing this, Shah Rukh’s return to the big screen after four years is in its third week – and, according to trade analysts, the film has crossed the Rs 960 crore (gross) mark worldwide, and has raked in over Rs 480 crore (nett) in domestic collections. This makes Pathaan the highest-grossing Hindi film of all time.

This, by all quantifiable measures, is a stupendous achievement — especially given that the film has a fairly unoriginal plot, the kind that’s a dime a dozen when it comes to action or espionage thrillers. But Pathaan’s unquantifiable — and, to my mind, real — achievements lie elsewhere. They lie in what the film’s — and, therefore, Shah Rukh’s — success signifies for India.

A rough few years

The Hindi film industry has regularly, and rightly, been criticised for its failure to speak up against human rights atrocities in their own country. One would think such censure is justified, given the wealth and clout that the fraternity possesses. And yet, in 2017, during the Padmavat row, none of Deepika Padukone’s success could shield her from threats of extreme physical violence issued by a political outfit; nor could her stature as a leading actor protect her from the vicious trolling she bore when she showed up at a university in Delhi in early 2020 to stand in solidarity with protesting students.

And while fearing for one’s life and safety is enough to break anyone’s spirit, it must be remembered that Deepika is a woman, and therefore a soft target in the deeply patriarchal society she inhabits. It is well known that social media, and real life, are battlegrounds for women.

But what happens when the axe falls on the nation’s biggest male superstar? The ordeal Shah Rukh went through in 2021, with the arrest and weeks-long incarceration of his son, would be enough to bring any parent — even Shah Rukh Khan — to their knees. It was also not lost on the public that in 2015 — a little over a year after the general elections of 2014 — Shah Rukh was one of the first mainstream Bollywood superstars to call a spade a spade with regard to the treatment of minorities in the country.

Even the run-up to Pathaan was dogged with controversy, with saffron bodies protesting loudly against the colour of an outfit worn by Deepika in the film. In the light of this, even a star of Shah Rukh’s stature couldn’t be faulted for buckling under pressure.

A man called Pathaan

But Shah Rukh Khan is nothing if not resilient. And no one knows how to play the long game better, or more smartly, than him. Thus, after several years of box office failures — and in a nation where spaces for dissent are rapidly shrinking — it was a radical move on his part to make a film like Pathaan. This noisy, edge-of-the-seat spy thriller is peppered with quiet but clear odes to the freedom of identity and the composite culture that India is. His character is called Pathaan, for crying out loud!

Second — and this is a cracker — Pathaan‘s lover is an ISI agent who is not evil. The real ‘terrorist’ in the film is one with ‘no country’. Yes, Pathaan’s soft nationalism is inescapable, but the absence of chest-thumping jingoism in a film that is, by definition, loud and designed to keep your adrenaline levels high, felt remarkably refreshing. Deepika’s character, Rubai, loves her homeland — just like anyone else loves theirs. She likens her dedication to Pakistan to Pathaan’s devotion to his own country (‘Main bhi tumhari tarah ek soldier hoon… apne desh ke liye kuch bhi kar sakti hoon’) while, at the same time, making it clear that her people (that is, the Pakistani people) would never tolerate the despicable actions of their military leader, who, with the help of the film’s main antagonist, was planning to unleash a deadly virus on unsuspecting masses in India. A mainstream, Hindi, big-budget spy film in 2023 that consciously avoids villainising our neighbour? Is that even possible? Apparently, with Shah Rukh Khan, it is.

More importantly, Rubai, at a crucial juncture in the storyline, tells Pathaan that she is not his enemy — and she’s telling the truth. On a Sunday evening, while observing the deafening cheers in Basusree cinema — one of South Kolkata’s last-remaining single-screen theatres, the best kind of place to watch films like Pathaan — it was clear that Shah Rukh had got an entire nation to root for and recognise humanity over hate.

But equally important is the film’s treatment of the character of Rubai. Deepika, though utterly gorgeous, isn’t there to provide a fillip to the male lead’s ego or actions. She has a solid role in the film’s storyline and in Pathaan’s trajectory. Rubai is, at all times, fully in control of her agency, and brooks no nonsense. Even in the few scenes where her character is made to cater to the male gaze, there is a plausible endgame in mind. Barring a couple of jokes that made me cringe, there is little to no detectable misogyny in the film. That is not saying much, given that the bar for the depiction of women in mainstream Indian cinema is so low. Shah Rukh himself has been part of problematic films like Happy New Year and Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam. But it is still worth pointing out, especially as a female Indian viewer.

Why women love Shah Rukh Khan

What does this mean for women who watch Shah Rukh’s films? As Shrayana Bhattacharya, the author of the brilliant and meticulously-researched Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence, had said in a 2021 interview, “[Shah Rukh] is not a feminist icon, but he is a female icon.”

Shah Rukh isn’t the first male Bollywood star to command a massive female following. But he is the first — and, so far, arguably, the only one — to connect with women in a way that transcends raw sex appeal. The bond that his female fan base shares with him seems to be centred on intimacy, respect, desire, solace and a feeling of being understood and valued — all of which, as Bhattacharya observes in her book, Indian women want, but rarely get, in their intimate relationships.

This is a special skill to have as a superstar: one that only a man who is in touch with, and isn’t afraid or ashamed of, his feminine side, can possess. It was a skill we missed witnessing on the big screen for four years, but were treated to, in all its glory, in Pathaan. As Bhattacharya had once said of her interactions with women all over India, “When I asked [women] why they choose Shah Rukh, and why they like him, there was this common complaint: ‘Well, our men are like Salman, but we would prefer Shah Rukh’.”

The quiet in the noise

None of this is to say that Pathaan is cinematically groundbreaking in any way. It is not. And, in a tweet, the vocalist and writer, T.M. Krishna, said that Shah Rukh should not be made an icon for civil liberties, as that would be doing a great disservice to those who continue to face persecution and State intimidation.

Krishna is absolutely right. In fact, if anything, the ordeals Shah Rukh went through in the recent past show that even wealth, privilege, power and superstardom cannot act as a shield against intimidation for certain sections of Indian society. And yet, in a world ruled by optics and social media, even a triumph at the box office of a film like Pathaan, and the ideas it silently and cleverly espouses, can serve as a message of hope.

Equally important: Pathaan is an objectively good film.

And so, as a Shah Rukh fan and an Indian woman who knows what it’s like to have our choices policed, it felt like a personal victory to witness Pathaan’s triumph — and to see that the colour of Rubai’s clothing in a certain frame of the film had not been changed.